THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST Paperback – 14 January 2016

Lovely

3.5 stars.The Darkest Part of the Forest is a brilliantly woven story that brings together sleeping princes, forbidden wishes and magical intrigue with modern family problems. At its heart, its a dark fairy tale. Around its edges, its a story of a girl who would pay the price of making a wish as a child. Its a story of a boy who learns to a accept his own power, even though he is afraid of it. Its a story of a Prince cursed to sleep for centuries.Its a story of a brother and a sister who wanted to be heroes, who wanted to kill monsters and save the world, to become the Knight and the Bard."Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself."Miss Black has crafted the town of Fairfold with the perfect balance of precision and mystery. Her writing is absolutely beautiful and the imagery it evokes is breathtaking. I was pulled into the mysteries of the forest and the fae-folk from page 1. The relationship of Ben and Hazel, with each other and their parents and even the sleeping prince, was complex and deep and it drives the central theme of the story. In themselves, Ben and Hazel are also very complex characters.Hazel's defining trait is courage. She is quick-witted and fearless in times of danger. She has her weaknesses but she still showcases profound strength and bravery. Justice is important to her, so is adventure. She is an insufferable trouble-maker but only has good in her heart.“She should tell him no, but instead she seemed to be running toward trouble, leaving no stone unturned, no boy unkissed, no crush abandoned, and no bad idea unembraced.”Ben is a romantic through and through. Not courageous in an outright manner like his sister but still strong in his own way. Also, he is gay. And I love how Miss Black has not let that be his ruling personality trait. Ben is a story teller, he loves adventure as much as his sister and it was him who had first called the sleeping boy their prince.“To Ben, love was the flame in which he wanted to be reborn. He wanted to be remade by it.”There are mysteries to solve, a town to save and evil kings to fight. There are old scores to settle, new romances to experience, faery revelry to attend.There’s a monster in our wood.She’ll get you if you’re not good.Drag you under leaves and sticks.Punish you for all your tricks.A nest of hair and gnawed bone.You are never, ever coming…It would have been the perfect book for me, if not for the occasional slumps this book went into. Despite the beautiful writing, there were parts in the story where it became unbearably boring. There are people who would enjoy that kind pacing, and even I like it a lot in many other books. But for this one it just didn't sit right. I was even thinking about dnf-ing it at one point, though I am glad I didn't. The story was complete in all its essences and it left me feeling a strange nostalgia for things I have never known or felt myself.

This book is set in the town of Fairfold in which Human and fae exist side by side, and there is glass coffin in the woods in which a prince has been asleep for centuries. Hazel and her brother are two of the humans in the town and one day, when the prince suddenly wakes up, they're both swept up in the lives of monsters and kings and princes.And that's all I wanna say about the plot because anything else might ruin the fun. And this is book definitely fun after you get past the first quarter, which isn't as interesting.The book was engaging, I liked the writing more than I did in Tithe, I loved the story and the setting the author created. I even liked the characters who I was initially iffy about. What I liked most, though, was how it sometimes took me off guard, in a 'pleasant surprise' sort of way. 'Pleasantly surprise' is, in fact, a pretty accurate description of how I felt about the book as a whole.It had a very mystical and mysterious tone to it that kept me interested; and Holly Black has a kind of poetic writing style that worked really well for the town of Fairfold and for all the main characters, neither of whom were very normal.I also couldn't be more glad that this was a standalone because, while I might enjoy reading more about this world, I'm happy that the story concluded in this one book; concluded very well too. There aren't nearly enough Fantasy standalones so it was really nice to read one.The book isn't perfect though. It has a few flaws, some of which I could overlook, like the slightly tame beginning and Ben's prince-obsession thing that he had going on. I mean, the guy could literally get you to dance your way off a cliff with a song, I think that gives him permission to be peculiar. There is, however, one thing that I can't quite ignore.Hazel, at one point, does some thing because of which I deemed her TSTL, aka 'too stupid to live', but that was her only moment of such stupid. Other times, she was okay, smart even. Which told me that the reason for Hazel's behaviour was the author.You see, what Hazel did was very important for the plot to move on, so the author needed to put it there. And had she had a better reason, there would have been no problem. Unfortunately, the author did not give a good reason. But after that point, things were great. I really enjoyed reading the book and I'm looking forward to reader other works of this author.I highly recommend checking this book out. It's really good.

I quite enjoyed this book and loved Holly's way of storytelling. The cover is also very pretty! I didn't like it as much as the A Court of thorns and roses series but I it's good enough.